Here's one I made earlier
I wanted to use my 8.5 x 42s with 2x boosters which makes them well-nigh impossible to use hand-held. The commercial tripod mounts available in the UK didn’t seem too clever, so I made one.
Basically it’s a 3mm aluminium baseplate about 135mm x 45mm, some strips of 35mm Velcro, nuts and bolts, and aluminium clamping strips. (I painted the aluminium black, just for appearance)).
The two bits of Velcro are fixed onto the baseplate using small bolts which go right through the Velcro, baseplate, and clamping strip. There’s a hole in the baseplate threaded to take a standard tripod mount (¼ UNC thread).
To mount the bins on the clamp, you thread the Velcro strips through the centre, and fasten them round the barrels of the bins. The gripping area of the Velcro is about 50mm x 30mm so it’s quite a secure grip. The soft side of the Velcro is next to the bins, to avoid damage caused to the bins from the hooky side. Once the mount’s on the bins you screw in the tripod quick release plate as usual.
It works pretty well, and, as you can see in the photos, will hold the bins with 2x booster attached. The inter-pupillary issue mentioned in PlanetMaker’s original post isn’t a problem - a certain amount of movement is possible when the whole thing’s assembled, so I just adjust the bins as per normal after the clamp’s fitted.
Total weight is about 80gms, cost was under £10, and all the material is readily available on eBay.
I don’t think there’s anything terribly inventive or original in the mount, but if you like making things, there are worse ways of spending a rainy morning!
If you want to have a go at making one yourself, I’m happy to provide more details - e-mail me.
Jeff
